Numerological Heuristics and Credit Risk in Peer-to-Peer Lending.

The article investigates how different numerological heuristics—specifically the round-number heuristic and the lucky-number heuristic—affect borrowers' funding success and loan repayment performance in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Using detailed data from a major Chinese P2P lending platform, it finds that borrowers who use the round-number heuristic, which simplifies decision-making by choosing round loan amounts, experience lower funding success rates and higher delinquency rates. Conversely, borrowers employing the lucky-number heuristic, which caters to lenders' superstitious preferences for the number eight (and avoidance of four), achieve higher funding success and better repayment outcomes. These findings distinguish heuristics by their underlying motives—cognition-conserving versus catering—and demonstrate that heuristic choice provides meaningful predictive information for credit risk assessment, offering practical implications for lenders and platform operators in improving underwriting and loan screening.